I think this page it’s the greatest opportunity to carry on with the community.
elYsiun my vote is for you!
yes but elsiun you should focus a little bit more on GAMES.
You know, to focus on games was the downfall of NaN! ;oP
You got that right! If they would have developed the animation/rendering with all of the time they spent makeing the game engine, Blender would probably be on-par or better than Lightwave or Maya, and selling a lot more copies becasue it only costs 300 dollars instead of 3,000+
I hope that NAN gets back into the swing of things and realises this. Otherwise, they will probably go under yet again.
Not to be mean, but are you slow or something? NaN already have gone under! NaN Technologies is bankrupt, end of story!
hmmm agree with that, game engine was not very good idea…they would have been concentrated toward the linear side of things…animation/modeling/rendering…
that is my opinion…and if they were…damn what geat app it would be 
On 2002-03-16 03:27, sara wrote:
yes but elsiun you should focus a little bit more on GAMES.
Elysiun should just concentrate on work produced by blender, whether games, still images or animations, and not focus on one small part of blender.
There is a forum for the realtime engine!
brian
I don’t think the game-engine was a bad idea - in conjunction with the modelling/animation aspect. I think it was more that NaN did not seem to be big enough to cope with everything at once. Also, one thing which I think was always missing was advertising - I rarely saw blender anywhere except on press-releases. Their biggest exposure was propably at the the likes of Siggraph - but that was marketing to a market that was for the most part already familiar with Blender. It seemed to lack that inyourfacecan’tmissit marketing strategy - which might have encouraged more people to try it out, from out of the 3d field, who wouldn’t have wasted time comparing it to other 3d programs.
Then again, this is just an opinion based on what I have seen, which is obviously pretty limited and definetly not based on any inside or factual information from NaN 
Hopefully Blender will re-surface, maybe under another company etc.
In the meantime I hope all the employees who have ended up without a job succeed quickly in finding a nice, stable job they enjoy (with a massive wage! 
how do you want me to focuss more on games?
I did have it planned to buy a publisher license so I could open game galleries with the elYsiun logo instead of the NaN and Blender logo’s. However I can’t buy one anymore now.
If you have any other ideas please let me know
i dont know about the netherlands, but here in the us, bankruptcy does NOT necessarilly mean that the company is going out of buisness. it can also be a way to be funded while your company undergoes a major restructuring to make a profit. from their website though, this doesnt sound like what they are planning.
also, i think that game blender was the downfall of blender. the game engine sucked (sorry, no offence), but the problem was at a fundamental level. 3d games must be heavilly optimised for the platform that they run on. writing a game with an interpreted language just doesnt cut it. there is no way that python will ever be fast enough to compare to hand optimised c and assembly code. it was a shortcut where shortcuts dont work.
BTW - while we all start to kick off our shoes and hang up our “blender” hats here at Elyiusn (for the time being… hopefully we should take a moment to thank Timothy Kanters for making us feel at home…
Also… realizing that things have kicked into high gear here… perhaps we could also try to help the poor guy out…
A little birdie told me Kib is desperate for a harddrive and some RAM so he can keep this site going at the pace it seems to have set…
Donations anyone? Poor Kib already spent the rent money on a new server chassis… all the help he could get would be appreciated…
jason
I totally agree; I think that building on top of elYsiun rather than setting up a totally new website is much more appropriate and time-effective. Blender needs one central community website, not many disparate ones.
With that said, thank you Timothy! 
Really, he’s keeping the dream alive for all of us.
As for donations, why not set up a micropayments system? Many of us are college-level students and professionals equipped with shiny plastic cards that can dish out cash over the Internet. http://www.paypal.com is probably the best place to transfer cash over the net. Amazon.com also has a “Donate Money” system, but they take a higher commission on what is donated.
Other fundraising activities can include (1) Amazon.com referrals to the two wonderful Blender books as well as other carefully-selected programming/3D books, (2) Create T-shirts or other paraphernalia with or without the Blender logo, with art donated from the community (there’s a demand for it at this thread), and (3) sounds far-fetched, but distribute the workload. That could mean either hosting galleries on multiple websites (in case one goes down, like Blender.nl did). That could also mean coding automation into elYsiun itself, similar to DeviantArt. Users there are able to automatically submit artwork to the galleries, web links to the directory, news items, and more. And Timothy, as an administrator, can code in an “Approval” system. He can wake up each morning, open his website, and Approve, with the click of his mouse, each piece of content users submit. If it’s garbage, he can just Delete it, and it will never go public. I wish I were an expert at PHP, but you could ask Jark (the admin) at http://www.deviantart.com for some help, or borrow the Slash system from Slashdot…
Oh, and you’d be pleasantly surprised how much money you can raise by asking for donations. Most of the members that have registered are really dedicated to Blender, and since we’re still shocked from Blender’s sudden death, we don’t want to see yet another Blender website tank.
Here’s another idea. Maybe elysiun.com can set up a link to a Wish List on Amazon. That way, is someone is feeling really generous, they can just click on over there and order what is needed.
Alright, just to say something, Gameblender was not really the downfall of blender. NAN probably would have never released publisher had it not been for the gaming thing, because publisher was all gaming. The program might have just gone on for free and they probably would have gone bankrupt anyway.
They could have made a little money had they put some advertisements on their site too.
Pooba
I believe there were MANY things that caused the downfall of blender. A lot of it is just plain bad luck. Not enough resources to market, a split community due to the game engine, a 3d plugin market DOMINATED by shockwave, and the biggest thing: The loved/hated interface.
I like the interface a lot, but big companies, who NaN needed to buy their software, took one look at the interface and ran. While the interface is the BEST think about blender in my opinion, it also is not standard. Most companies, who nan needed to invest in their product, are looking for products that wont require too much training by their employees. They want something with good documentation, and a STANDARD interface. It doesnt matter that the standard interface isn’t very good, it’s what employees are used to using. I think with a more attractive (read: same as everything else) interface, nan might have been able to get more sponsorship for the product, meaning more resources, meaning no death. It’s too late for NaN, but its not too late for blender. We’ll se what happens.
My 2 cents as a fairly new Blender convert on this topic.
Yes - let’s be honest about the game thing. Lots of fun. Good for demonstrating game creation principles. Cool for making 3D walkthroughs. But where’s the killer game created with Blender? There is none that I know of.
Perhaps less time should have been spent trying to convince us that “you don’t really need raytracing”. I think Blender needs this to be considered a ‘serious’ 3D package in the future. (Yes, why not dig this one out for another round or two?).
About supporting elYsiun. I would be happy to make a donation towards keeping this site up until we see what NaN (or its liquidators) do next.
We just need a voluntary “Membership Subscription” or “Financial Membership” option or something like that - and of course a safe way to make the donation.
What do you recommend Timothy?
Hi All,
I am new to Blender.
I hope to use it for the game engine, to help with game ideas/prototypes. This is what makes Blender unique from the other 3d apps.
I think wireless, portable gaming will be as big if not bigger than consoles so it is very important than Nan gets re-established in some form soon. Also using the AmigDE for Blender games would ensure maximum distribution to nearly all PDAs and other portable devises and well as the usual Windows systems.
As for a renderer for still graphics or animation I think Blender should allow itself be exported to Lightwave, 3D Max, Bazil or Final Render systems. There seems to be heavy competition in rendering systems and IMHO Blender should just concentrate on the Game engine.
Valan
Competition in what sense? At Publisher’s current price, any rendering system that offers some of the higher-end tools might definitely have a market. However, I think this would ONLY work if Blender had a more standard interface. NaN could have standardized (or minimally, cleaned up), the interface without distroying what makes Blender unique.
I think the game engine could have worked as a prototyping tool, but does anyone think there’s a market for the kind of games that could be produced with the game engine? Most gaming companies spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions developing a single game. How can Blender even compete with this?
Creating a good still requires a good deal of work and attention to detail, but it’s a process that is limited by virtue of the fact that it’s a single image. When you’re talking about the creation of a game, the scope expands significantly, and requires a good deal more effort to do it well. Is there a market for people willing to make this kind of commitment with the toolset that Blender offers? I’m not convinced that such a market exists.
The Blender software is dead without the Blender Community. You can’t have one without the other.
LA-
Overextended, I totally agree about the interface. It is blenders best and worst trait, funny enough. I do think that it could have been standardized, cleaned up, and that this (coupled with some marketing) could have saved the company. But who knows. Can’t change the past.
I disagree however, about the game engine. Certainly, blenders engine was not up to par. But developers are continually looking for easier ways to make their games. Dark ages of Camelot used the NetImmerse engine, Deus Ex used the Unreal engine (the sequel will use the Unreal 2 engine) No one lives forever and aliens vs predator 2 used the lithtech engine; companies building their own proprietary engine is becoming less common. If Blender’s engine was as good as the competitors, and the functionality was doubled, (much lower level access from python available, logic bricks that work, etc) it would be a POWERFUL, POWERFUL game development tool that many big companies would be GLAD to throw a meager 300 bucks at to use. It wasn’t at that level yet, but it was definately headed in the right direction. I think the plugin, wireless, etc was straying a little off though, and NaN just seemed to be trying to do too much.
Having most game development tools in one piece of software, as well as being able to piece together logic, and begin with a pretty good physics simulation from the start, without losing the power to do what you want through scripting; being coupled with blender’s ease-of-use modeller/animation tools is just-well-a game developers dream. And consider all the people who are into games who would like to make their own but dont know how-
but in the end, it IS a dream. And we’ve woken up. The concept was good, but it wasnt ever what it could have been. There may be hope yet, if the program is open-sourced, or someone else purchases it. But it’s kind of in someone else’s hands right now, and who knows what’s around the corner.
There never was a good sellable game produced in blender in the two years that the game engine has existed. Why? Because the people most interested in Blender gaming were amatures. Amatures don’t know how to run a project, from design, to planning, to more design, to work work work work work till your head explodes, to searching for bugs, organizing a team, etc etc etc. They don’t have the time either. I believe that if someone REALLY wanted to make a game with Blender, it would be possible if they quit their jobs, and worked on development full time. Because that’s what the pros do - work full time.
Why did no game companies pick up blender as a dev tool? Here are my theories:
- Interface
- Interface
- Other comparable engines had more features, were more stable, and ran faster
- Python scripting: most developers know c
- Not enough advertising
- Physics not complete enough
- Interface
Anyway, I hope someone picks up blender, or its open sourced, because I still think that a game creator/modeller/animator that is less than 5 megs is a piece of software that people would be interested in, if only the barriers to becoming interested (not knowing about it, bugs, interface, not enough features, etc) were taken down.
Cheers!